Re: Bug#741573: Proposed draft of ballot to resolve menu/desktop question
Hi.
Your recent post to Ian is inappropriate and not consistent with the
rules of conduct we've established for our communication.
Multiple members of our community have talked to you about this issue.
Please stop.
owner@bugs and listmaster copied, although I will not request any
specific action at this time.
>>>>> "Josselin" == Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> writes:
Josselin> Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>> - defining new field names for .desktop files to contain the trad
>> menu metadata, as necessary. I think we can safely call these
>> fields X-Debian-* or X-Debian-Menu-* or something.
Josselin> What is the use case for these fields?
>> - a small amount of work in the already-existing .desktop-to-menu
>> conversion program
Josselin> Who cares? We can have much better than that and use the
Josselin> XDG specification to its full extent:
Josselin> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdg-menu
>> - policy should probably say that a contributor sending a trad
>> menu patch for a program with a .desktop file should do so by
>> sending a .desktop file patch, rather than a trad menu patch.
Josselin> Good. This way it can be ignored as well.
>> In the longer term:
>>
>> - Desktop program maintainers would get occasional patches to add
>> trad menu metadata to their .desktop files. The tooling would
>> then do the right thing. This is the only extra human work that
>> those maintainers would have to do.
Josselin> So you complain that dropping entirely the Debian menu
Josselin> (which is the sensible thing to do) would get rid of a few
Josselin> thousands mostly-boilerplate files, while we get rid of
Josselin> much more than that in useless C code every other minor
Josselin> release, but suddenly giving extra work to all maintainers
Josselin> of packages containing desktop entries is OK?
Josselin> Maybe some people need to get rid of that mentality where
Josselin> other people have to do more work to comply with their
Josselin> twisted view of reality.
>> - GUI program maintainers have a choice of whether to provide
>> trad menu entries via this new mechanism or by providing a
>> separate trad menu file.
Josselin> Or to do nothing at all about the trad menu, which is the
Josselin> sensible thing to do?
>> - Maintainers of non-GUI programs which don't want to be in the
>> DE menus can continue to provide menu entries for the trad menu
>> without needing to interact with the XDG menu system.
Josselin> Or they can provide entries with appropriate
Josselin> NoDisplay/OnlyShowIn/NotShowIn fields, as described in
Josselin> Charles’ proposed policy.
>> - Trad menu consumers do not need to gain any heavyweight runtime
>> dependencies.
Josselin> Neither do they need to by using xdg_menu.
>> - It is still possible to make the trad menu visible in DEs using
>> the existing technique.
Josselin> No, it is not. Maybe in an alternative reality, but in
Josselin> Debian, KDE and GNOME have both made this impossible, on
Josselin> purpose.
Josselin> There is no use for the traditional Debian menu. It is
Josselin> deadweight technology. Any effort invested in it is
Josselin> wasted. Get over it.
Josselin> -- Joss
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